Yesterday afternoon, CNN broke the story that one of the iconic Jackson Magnolias outside the south face of the White House needs to be removed. The tree is suffering from rot and was on the verge of falling down in large part stemming from a repair in the 1970s that left the core filed with cement.
In the story, CNN mentioned that—as with a number of decisions about the White House and its grounds—the choice to remove the tree was made by First Lady Melania Trump.
The decision to remove the tree was ultimately made by first lady Melania Trump after she assessed all of the professional information and accompanying historical documents.
Trump’s decision came after consulting with experts and historians, and it was made on their recommendation that the tree was “too damaged and decayed” to remain.
It was, essentially, a non-story. CNN noted that White House groundskeepers have been growing an offshoot of the tree, which is already “eight to ten feet tall,” which will be planted in its place. But numerous outlets, aggregating the story, ran with the snippet about Melania Trump deciding to take down the tree, leaving out key context in their headlines.
“Melania Trump Orders to Cut Down Iconic White House Tree Because It’s Decaying,” wrote Complex.
“Melania Trump orders removal of near-200-year-old tree from White House,” said Newsweek.
Numerous sites went with the Melania Trump peg.
While all of the sites properly reported the decision was made in consultation with experts, the framing caused an uproar on the right.
“Disgusting! #FakeNews Newsweek Lies About Tree Removal to Smear Melania Trump,” said the Gateway Pundit.
“The clickbait experts at Newsweek and other fake news outlets want their readers to think Melania Trump ordered the removal of a nearly 200-year-old tree from the White House just for kicks,” wrote InfoWars.
Critics compared the framing of the Melanie Trump story to the uproar over a photo of Donald Trump at a koi pond from his visit to Japan in the fall that went viral because it appeared the president had somehow broken fish-feeding protocol. (The full video proved otherwise.) Both stories have been used to illustrate that the left-leaning mainstream media is always out to get the Trumps.
While Melania Trump is certainly taking an unfair share of blame for making a decision the vast majority of experts advised her to make, Michelle Obama was subject to the same scrutiny by conservative media for the duration of her time in the White House—and even on the campaign trail. Obama was chastised for years over her off-the-cuff remark about being “proud” of her country for the first time in her “adult life” at a primary in early 2008, while Donald Trump ran on a promise to “make America great again,” which implies the country is not currently great.
Likewise, in 2014, the Daily Caller accused Michelle Obama of behaving in Marie Antoinette-like behavior for taking a picture of her dogs sitting in the White House dining room.
“Bone appétit!,” the aides [of Obama] added to the insensitive tweet, using the language of France’s queen Marie Antoinette, who was executed by radicals in 1793.
And much like the uproar over Melania’s outfit to fly to Texas after Hurricane Harvey (which she changed out of), Michelle Obama was criticized on Fox News for what she wore when she went to visit the Gulf Coast after the BP oil spill.